Thursday, July 14, 2011

Summer School

My summer school job is a dream job!  It's a Literacy Academy; it's a grant funded program for struggling readers, specifically our "bubble" kids.  It's a 4 week program, M-Th, 9 am - 1pm.  As the name suggests we teach literacy; and that's it!  We do have a chunk of time carved out that we may teach literacy across the content areas if we choose.  I have chosen to do a little of the science/social studies connections in our Houghton Mifflin guides that we don't usually get to during the school year, but I am also including a community service project that we will work on a couple of days a week and journal about once a week.  I'm super excited to see where the kids will take this project.

As I mentioned in my last post I am only planning on doing the "first steps" to WBT.  I might add some brain toys in here and there but I am still new to braintoys so it will be pretty basic.  Our summer school (which is only 2nd and 3rd graders) will be using a school wide Positive Behavior Instructional Support system (PBIS) to increase student engagement as well as an incentive for school wide behavior in the shared common spaces such as the hallway, cafeteria and playground. 

I will be sad to be leaving my baby girl after spending a month with her at home watching her grow and develop (she is 9.5 months and started crawling a couple of weeks ago) but I am super excited to watch a group of struggling readers transform in the period of just four weeks! 

I will have the parents sign a media release and hopefully post a video within the new few weeks.  One great thing about summer school is how much more importance is placed on  professional learning communities; there is a teacher who was hired for the sole purpose of being a floater teacher so classroom teachers can observe others in action.  What a great way for me to spread WBT and to absorb new strategies from my colleagues.

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